Mick Taylor sometimes played with Billy Preston in the opening act. "That's The Way God Planned It" (with Taylor on guitar) is available on Goodnight Vienna (VGP). (Billy Preston is OK, but he never hit the roof, as far as I'm concerned)
In less than one year I saw Preston at the Forum five times--two shows with George Harrison on his infamous Dark Horse tour in late '74, and then three nights with the Stones in July 75.
His solo set during the Harrison tour was sweet relief--George was drowning during that tour: his voice was shot (they called it the "Dark Hoarse" tour), he played a lot of songs from his new (and worst) album, didn't want to play Beatle songs (the few that he did, he tweaked: "While My Guitar Gently SMILES"), and lectured the audience in L.A. when someone shouted a request for "Bangla Desh!"
Billy's set of songs, which included "Nothin' From Nothin'" got everybody up and dancing, and the critics agreed that Billy stole the show.
A few months later, he's back on tour, with the Stones. In the middle of their set, he gets to do two of his own songs (one from his new album called "That's Life"--not the Sinatra song--that has since been forgotten, and the instrumental "Outta Space") The first one gives Mick a break, and during the second one Mick comes back out to dance and finally swing over the first couple of rows on a "Tarzan rope."
The odd thing during this was to watch the Stones function as his backing band. His percussionist, Ollie Brown, traded places with Charlie and played the drums for these two songs.
I can't speak for the rest of the crowd, but I don't think Preston endeared himself to the rock audience that night. At the end of the summer he was the musical guest on the first episode of Saturday Night Live (then called NBC's Saturday Night). But he didn't make the charts again until years later.
He played with the Stones for two years after that, but after that bit of using them as his backing group his currency among the rock audience seemed to diminish.
Hairs a few more 4 ya's, seen preston 6-3-73 he was backup 4 deep purple , weird thing about this show is purple had a new album out called Who do we think we r with a pretty big hit from it called woman from tokyo & they did not play a single track off of it , entire show was the made in japan album with lucille as encore , purple was unbelieveable , preston he held his own
I for one have never forgotton Billy's mid-70s albums "Everybody Likes Some Kind Of Music", "Music Is My Life", & "The Kids and Me".... Actually, I do dig his mid-60s albums - "Most Exciting Organ Ever" and "The Wildest Organ In Town!" (Sly Stone contributed) Could I make these titles up??
Koen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > There appears to be a lot of vibrato in those > wigs.
I, too, was wondering about the Strat, which, as far as I recall, he did not use on stage with the Stones.
Incidentally, was it only "sometimes" that Taylor played with Preston? I thought he played all of the shows, so on a number of days, Taylor was playing four shows a day. Those Preston shows were a nice warm up for his Stones performances.